I read pretty much anything, from fantasy (City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett) to romance (Bared to You by Sylvia Day) to classics (Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad). The only genres I don't read are self-help and comic books/graphic novels.

7/1 - A Tasmanian western set in 1830. This reads like historical fiction (where the main characters and/or main story is based in fact but the rest is from the author's imagination), but it's not. It's just fiction, but the way it's written makes it feel more sophisticated and genuine than I would have expected from a new writer. Except for it being Australian and on land it reminds me of Sean Thomas Russell's Under Enemy Colours, which is based, in part, on fact. I'll have to go look Mr Bartulin up and see who he is and where he's from. To be continued...

10/1 - Bartulin is indeed Australian and this isn't his first book, but it is his first historical/western - his previous books were crime novels. This isn't a run-of-the-mill fiction where the good guy survives after a near fatal battle and the bad guys gets what's coming to him, either physically or, if he doesn't die, he's shown up for what/who he really is. Don't even expect a particularly happy ending for the main characters - 1830s Tasmania (hell, the whole country) was a rough place and Bartulin doesn't gloss over the fact. Consider Deadwood or Hell on Wheels versus the 1950s westerns with Clint Eastwood, in Deadwood everyone was dirty, foul-mouthed and spent most of their time drinking, fighting or having sex and then they died (usually violently), but in a Clint Eastwood western there was some polite fisticuffs followed by a quiet drink and then he rode off into the sunset with a clean, well-dressed lady. Infamy is much more Deadwood than Clint Eastwood, and therefore much more realistic. Recommended to fans of westerns and Australians looking for realistic fiction about their own country.